How to Dodge Drones Like You're in al-Qaida

Features Editor

February 21, 2013 // 03:20 PM EST

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By the time you hear it, it's often too late. If you know how to deter a hunter-killer drone, the thinking goes, you'll evade incineration.

With the buzz of unmanned aerial vehicles over the Middle East and Horn of Africa growing louder and louder, it's been suspected that militant networks have been crowdsourcing best practices on how to slip out of the scope of killer flying robots. Now, here's proof of their collusion: The Associated Press just found a comprehensive guidebook in northern Mali believed to have been left behind by Islamist militants.

The 22-point tip sheet has apparently been circulating among al-Qaida and its affiliates for the last two years, and is as wide-ranging as the organizations and their tactics.

No. 18: Form fake gatherings, for example by using dolls and statues placed outside false ditches to mislead the enemy

It goes from the downright crafty...

No. 3: Spread around reflective glass (or, as the West African twist goes, modestly-woven mats of desert grass) to camouflage the tops of vehicles and the roofs of building

...to the technologically saavy.

No. 6: Jamming of and confusing of electronic communication using old equipment and keeping them 24-hour running because of their strong frequencies and it is possible using simple ideas of deception of equipment to attract the electronic waves devices similar to that used by the Yugoslav army when they used the microwave (oven) in attracting and confusing the NATO missiles fitted with electromagnetic searching devices